Quiz

7th-week-quiz

Media Technology and cultures

1. Situation now: new media technologies

2. Scholars, users and non-users try to understand new media as soon as they are introduced

• How can they be useful?

• What are their risks?

• What are their benefits?

3. To really understand new media…

• Must consider their technological features

• Must also consider how they fit into society

  • Personal, cultural, historical presumptions

  • Values evoked by the new technology's features

4. David Nye's research

5. Responses to new technologies:

• Three utopian responses to new technology:

  • Natural societal developments

  • Improvements to daily life

  • Forces for transforming reality for the better

• Three dystopian responses to new technologies:

  • fear of losing control

  • worry about becoming dependent

  • being unable to stop change

6. Smart speakers

• How can they be used?

• What are their risks?

• What are their benefits?

Technology and society

1. Technological determinism

Definition: viewing new technologies as powerful agents of change in society, as active forces that humans have trouble resisting. This view is most common when technology is new.

2. Social construction of technology

Definition: seeing people as the primary sources of change in technology and society; technology influences people and vice-versa; ultimately new technology is domesticated (taken for granted as part of everyday life).

3. Social shaping of technology

middle ground

Technology determinism

Old argument: communication technologies make us dumber

• Socrates saw writing as threat to oral communication

• Quick editing in film and TV shortens attention span

• Use of mobile devices cause people to lose their sense of belonging to be place and their interpersonal skills

• Nicholas Carr argued that Google is making people stupid

Milder forms of technological determinism

Media choice = use of technology has direct consequences, but people make strategic, usually rational choices.

• “You are what you eat” thinking

Social construction of technology

• SCOT = technologies arise from social processes

• social forces influence the invention of new technologies

• SCOT theorists see technological development as also being influences by

  • Investors

  • Competitors

  • Government agencies

  • Users

Recurring themes

• Questioning whether mediated communication and relations can be authentic